... of my own immediate world. So I read travel books to compensate. Paul Theroux's travel writing was my favourite. It is sublime. My second Paul Theroux book was The Old Patagonia Express, the story of his overland journey from North America to Argentinian Patagonia by train. The journey ends on the empty Patagonian steppe. The isolation, the sense of space, is palpable. In Patagonia ...

... only take a couple of hours and we could catch the bus back to the factory. So by 9am we are entering shops that had just opened and they were quite chuffed to have customers arrive so early! I bought a few things (it's my duty to help the economy, I keep telling Paul!!) and by 11.30 we hop on a bus back to the workshop, thinking everything will be all ready to get going.

We then sat in the workshop reception area until about 3pm, as our van still hadn't ...

... sign there. I had gone for a rest at Gerringong surf club, where I had asked a couple about campsites nearby, no sign of the bag there. Fearing the worst, Lewis, the son, offered to take me to Kiama! Which is a further 7km. Although he was in shock that I had biked all this way, up all these hills, the landscape here is almost exactly like the Lake District, hills and valleys everywhere, never flat for more than 100m. Once in Kiama, we tried everywhere I had been, just as we were ...

I have watched countless movies where actors/actress have had jet lag and I thought it was some joke. Like really guys, suck it up and stop complaining. Needless to say, after a day and a half of traveling jet lag is a real thing and it sucks. Last night I slept 11 hours, however it was from 4 p.m. to 3 a.m. Then woke up starving with no food. My body is so confused, which I guess is understandable since I completely skipped a whole day of my life. So ...